John loved his monthly drills but they left him wanting more. He even started thinking about making the Army his career. Those thoughts led to more questions then answers. We talked about going active duty Army instead of becoming a police officer. So we looked into our options. The one we liked most was to stay in the Reserves and join the ROTC program at Washingtion University. The ROTC program started grooming John to become an officer in the Army and he was allowed to continue his drill weekend with the Reserves. By doing things this way we were also lucky because John wasn't on a scholarship so if he didn't want to go on Active duty he wouldn't owe the Army any time.
Things smoothed out and John enjoyed his time between me, classes, ROTC, Reserves, and a part time job. The time really flew by. I continued working full time at TWA and was doing lots of overtime. That paid off for me in terms of a promotion. I became a supervisor in charge of helping out travel agents and their high end customers. We were both so busy it was hard to take advantage of our free travel benefits.
By the time the summer of 1991 came around, John was ready for a bit of a break. Unfortunately the Reserve unit had other ideas. It was time for his two weeks of annual training. This year it would be in the form of a "Warfighter Exercise" at Fort Sill, OK. This also was the first time we would be seperated for any length of time thanks to the Army. It may have been the first time, but it was not in the least the last time. We had no idea how many separations were in store for us.
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